Hybrids

“We can’t go looking for Ponter,” said Louise. “Think about it: the lasers may have zapped the virus that was in him, but that hardly confers immunity, and we’re infected, too, no? It may not do anything to white Gliksins, but we’re carriers. He can’t see us until you and I have been decontaminated, as well.”

“So, what should we do then?” asked Mary.

“Get Jock Krieger,” said Louise.

“What? Why? He can’t hurt anyone where we left him.”

“No, but if there is an antidote for the virus, or a way to neutralize it on a large scale, he’s the one who would know, right?”

“What makes you think he’ll tell us?” said Mary.

Louise’s tone was firm for the first time since Reuben had died. “If he doesn’t, I’ll kill him,” she said simply.

They waited until it had been many minutes since they’d heard any animal sounds from outside. Then, cautiously, they opened the lodge’s door, snow swirling in.

It took most of the morning to reach the building near Konbor Square where’d they’d deposited the trussed-up Jock Krieger.

“I half expect him to be gone,” said Louise as they approached the closed door. “That bastard seems to have no end of tricks up his sleeve…”

She pushed up the five-pronged control that unlatched the door.

Jock was not gone.

He was lying on his side. Pools of dark blood were on the floor around him. His skin was white, waxy.

Mary turned him over. There was coagulated blood all over Jock’s cheeks and chin, and extending down like wine-colored sideburns from his ears. She glanced down briefly and saw that his pants were also soaked with blood, which had presumably poured out of his lower orifices.

Mary fought to keep down the tubers and meat she’d eaten for breakfast. She looked over at Louise, who was biting her lower lip. Mary turned away and tried to make sense of it all.

Two dead Gliksins.

Two dead male Gliksins…

It was almost as if…

Surfer Joe, Mark II.

But no. No, that was impossible. Impossible! Yes, Mary had doodled a design for a virus that would only kill male Gliksins, but she’d shredded those sheets of paper, and she’d certainly never coded it into Jock’s program. He’d obviously made his virus before Mary had rendered it harmless, then, but…

But it was behaving like the one Mary had thought of, the one that would kill Homo sapiens who had Y chromosomes.

Mary hadn’t made that virus. She had not …

Unless…

No, no. That was crazy.

But she’d traveled between universes, and so had Jock. And if, in one version of her reality, she had not made Surfer Joe deadly to male Homo sapiens, then…

Then, perhaps, in another version of reality she had gone ahead with her fantasy, had mapped out such a virus…

And this Jock Krieger, the one who had exsanguinated through every natural opening in his body, might have come from that version of reality…

Mary shook her head. It was all too bizarre. Besides, hadn’t Ponter and Louise said often enough that the universe Mary called home and the one Ponter called home were entangled? That they were the two original branches that had split apart when consciousness first arose on Earth 40,000 years ago?

If that was the case…

If that was the case, then someone other than Mary had modified the virus.

But who? Why?

Chapter Forty-three

“And we are just that: a great and wonderful people. Yes, we have made missteps—but we made them because we are always walking forward, always marching toward our destiny…”

Cornelius Ruskin tried to control it as he watched the news report, but he couldn’t: his whole body was shaking.

He’d intended his modification of Jock Krieger’s Surfaris virus as a defensive weapon, not an offensive one—a way of protecting the Neanderthal world from the depredations of…

…well, of people like him. Like he used to be…

And now, two men were dead.

Of course, if all went as he’d expected from now on, no more would die. Male Homo sapiens would stay in their own world, denied nothing except the right to take their evil through the portal.

Cornelius had found a nice rental house in Rochester, on a tree-lined Leave It to Beaver street; such a wonderful contrast to his old penthouse in the slums. But it didn’t feel comfortable; it felt like hell. He was gripping the arms of his new easy chair, trying to steady himself, as CNN showed the interview with Mary Vaughan, one of the women he’d raped. Not that she was discussing that; rather, she was explaining why male Gliksins had to stay here, in this world, never traveling to the Neanderthal one. Accompanying her, looking hale and hearty, was Ponter Boddit.

The interview had been done by CBC Newsworld, and picked up by CNN; Mary had apparently stood Newsworld up a few days ago, when she’d raced off to try to stop Jock Krieger, but now she was back here, in this reality.

The reality that Cornelius Ruskin had to live with.

“So you’re saying it’s not safe for any male Homo sapiens to travel to the Neanderthal world?” asked the male Asian interviewer.

“That’s right,” said Mary. “The viral strain Jock Krieger released is—”

“That’s the strain the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dubbed ‘Ebola-Saldak,’ correct?” asked the interviewer.

“That’s right,” said Mary. “We assume Krieger’s intention had been to make a strain that was only fatal to Neanderthals, but instead he ended up with something that selectively kills male Homo sapiens. We don’t know how widely dispersed that strain is now in the Neanderthal world, but we do know that it’s fatal to male humans of our species within hours of exposure.”

“What about this Neanderthal decontamination technology? Dr. Boddit, what can you tell us about that?”

“It uses tuned lasers to destroy foreign biomolecules in the body,” said Ponter. “Both Dr. Vaughan and myself were processed by it before crossing back to this version of Earth. It’s completely effective, but, as Dr. Vaughan said, any male Gliksin infected with Ebola-Saldak will die unless treated by this same process very quickly, and there are very few such decontamination stations on my world.”

“And other than this laser technology, there’s no cure or vaccine?”

“Not yet,” said Mary. “Of course, we will try to find one. But, remember, we’ve been working on cures for other Ebola strains for years, so far without success.”

Cornelius shook his head. When he’d realized that Jock wasn’t just doing simulations but really pla

It was supposed to compensate a bit, be a step toward evening out Cornelius’s karmic account—not that he could ever make up for what he’d done in Toronto. But the rapist had been the old him, the angry him. He really was a new man now—still wronged, but able to control his anger at being wronged. No, he no longer felt the way he had, back when he’d attacked Mary Vaughan, back when he’d savaged Qaiser Remtulla, back when testosterone had coursed through his veins. But they must still feel it, must still wake up in cold sweats, terrifying images of…

Well, not of him, he imagined, but of a man in a black ski mask. At least, that was how Qaiser must see him, for she didn’t know the identity of her attacker.

But Mary Vaughan knew who he was.

It was a double-edged sword. Cornelius understood that. Mary couldn’t identify Cornelius without Ponter being exposed to charges for the…the cure …he’d administered to him.